My headstrong lord, consider now and say
Whether you want to fight or run away!
—THE PERSIAN BOOK OF KINGS
The Americans want to eliminate me.
—THE SHAH
The thirteenth day of Nowruz, the final day of the spring break, was traditionally an occasion for family outings to public parks, gardens, and picnic spots. This year, Sizdeh-Bedar fell on Sunday, April 2, and many Tehranis took day trips to the countryside, while others stayed closer to home, motoring the short distance to Karaj to the west, to the Abbasabad hills in the east, or to the Latian Dam, a beauty spot popular with the Imperial Family. Downtown, tens of thousands of picnickers filled the broad lawns that marched outward from the grand archway of the Shahyad Monument. “There were only a few cases of quarrels among picnickers,” reported Kayhan, “and police and Gendarmes said most people, in a jovial mood, enjoyed their Sizdeh, which was made even more enjoyable by the beautiful sunshine.” The arrival of warm spring weather saw fresh snowfall in northeastern Iran, Gilan on the Caspian was drenched by heavy rains, and there followed several days of high winds in Tehran, which “raised the dust and scattered garbage, causing inconvenience to many pedestrians. In the mornings after the winds, the city has suffered a typical heat wave that is apt to suffocate many.”
From overseas, dignitaries and celebrities lined up to see the Shah like so many airliners circling over Mehrebad Airport. “Foreign trade delegations poured into Iran,” recalled Britain’s ambassador Tony Parsons, “and it was hard to imagine that we were living on the edge of a volcano.” Formal state visits were paid by the presidents of West Germany and Senegal. The Shah received the commander of the Indian Navy, and the Queen welcomed to Niavaran a delegation of prominent American feminist leaders. Two American politicians, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, both presidential aspirants, flew to Tehran to burnish their foreign policy credentials. Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi had taken special care to arrange the Shah’s audience with Reagan. The Iranian was friendly with the glamorous Ron and Nancy Reagan, who fondly regarded him as an honorary member of their “kitchen cabinet” of advisers. Convinced that Reagan had a good chance of defeating Jimmy Carter in 1980, Zahedi wanted the Shah to be his preferred partner on the world stage and hoped that a Reagan victory would get U.S.-Iran relations back on track. “Ron and Nancy stayed in my house,” he said. “I sent them by plane from the south of Iran to the north and from the east to the west. I wanted to show the geopolitics of Iran’s position in the region. Reagan and the Shah spoke about geopolitics. The Shah was terribly impressed.” The Shah’s interview with Reagan took place the same day another prominent conservative politician, Margaret Thatcher, the leader of Britain’s opposition Conservative Party, flew in to Mehrebad. Princess Ashraf and Prime Minister Amuzegar feted the Iron Lady at separate luncheons, and Ambassador Parsons took her to Isfahan and Shiraz for a spot of sightseeing. “Isfahan was full of European and American tourists, as was customary in the spring,” Parsons wrote in his memoir. “The only evidence that everything was not entirely satisfactory was that Mrs. Thatcher’s visit to the Isfahan bazaar was quietly dropped, her escort explaining to me that there was ‘the possibility of a little trouble there.’” The Shah’s session with Thatcher had no sooner ended than George Bush, the former CIA director and future forty-first president, was escorted into his office.
In downtown Tehran, and despite the return to piety, grind houses, strip bars, and nudie cinemas that lined Avenue Lalezar, formerly known as the “Street of Ambassadors,” attracted a steady trade. Elsewhere, office workers looking for a shady lunch spot strolled over to Avenue Kakh, the old royal quarter built by Reza Shah with its rambling lawns, trees, and fountains, while to the north Shemiran and the surrounding hills were as charming as ever. “The parks are immaculate, studded with sculpture and fountains,” wrote one visitor. “Along tree-lined Pahlavi Avenue, apartment buildings, 30 stories high, shade splendid mansions only partly hidden by brick walls and iron-latticed gates. There are restaurants and nightclubs with names like Miami and Chattanooga. Department stores and supermarkets offer almost anything that can be found in an American suburban shopping mall. The Yves St. Laurent and Charles Jourdan boutiques cater to stylish customers.” But the languid spring atmosphere was deceptive. Iranians counted the cost of the Nowruz holiday disturbances that left at least five dead and ninety-eight injured. Violence had been reported in fifty-five towns and cities, with hundreds of commercial properties put to the torch.
* * *
FOR THE FIRST time since the outbreak of unrest in January, longtime observers of the Iranian scene studied the Shah’s prospects. “Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is beset by grave economic, social and political problems he set in motion when he spearheaded the successful oil producers’ fight to quadruple oil prices in 1973,” reported the Washington Post. “Rarely would contemporary history appear to provide such an example of a people’s ingratitude towards a leader who has brought about an economic miracle of similar proportions.” The Shah faced a tough economic climate at a time of rising popular expectations. “A year ago you wouldn’t have found all these people to go rioting,” stated an Iranian economist. “They would have been working in the construction sector.” But with the economy slowed down and the construction sector in the doldrums, unskilled laborers saw their daily wage packet fall from $10 to $7. An Iranian-based ambassador said, “The only way out for him now is to deliver the goods—and fast. But can he?”
The final spasms of unrest were felt on Monday, April 3, the day the King, Queen, and their children returned to Tehran from Kish Island. Police officers responding to an anonymous tip rushed to the Takht-e Jamshid movie theater to discover explosives planted and timed to detonate under seats. The packed hall was quickly evacuated and the devices defused just in time. In Zarand, firefighters managed to put out a fire caused by gasoline sprinkled on the roof of a local cinema. But police were too late to reach a cinema in Veramin, whose eastern wall “was suddenly engulfed in flames.” Fire consumed a large manufacturing plant on Karaj Road, a bus depot in the town of Shushtar in Khuzestan Province, and the Physical Culture Organization building in Sirjan in Kerman. The Youth Hostel in Kermanshah was firebombed. A policeman was blinded in a grenade attack in Mashad. The use of accelerants and explosives suggested the revolutionary underground was determined to cause maximum panic and casualties. “These groups have obviously taken to arson now,” reported the Pars News Agency. “Attacks with pickaxes and crowbars on bank buildings have continued as in the past. But they are increasingly using fire-bombs.” According to the authorities, the saboteurs traveled in small commando units of between two and five people. Paid for hire, and “mostly drawn from the marginal strata of the society,” they fanned out from Tehran to strike public facilities “in order to promote commotion throughout the country.”
The Islamist underground was determined to draw the security forces into a series of confrontations that they hoped would lead to more deaths and another round of forty-day memorial services. They also hoped that bloodshed would discredit liberalization in the eyes of Iran’s middle class and the Shah’s American and European allies. The Shah refused to play their game. He believed that a sweeping security crackdown would destroy the progress he had made to clean up Iran’s human rights image and would only taint the throne. He could not afford to freeze liberalization and disrupt political activity for at least one and perhaps two years, during which time he expected his health to decline: intellectuals and moderate dissidents whose participation he needed in the elections would denounce the open space as a fraud. He also understood that his son could not inherit a blood-stained throne. It was essential that Iranians accepted Reza’s legitimacy but recognition by the foreign powers who guaranteed Iran’s security and engaged in commerce was also crucial. For these reasons he vetoed any measures that increased the likelihood of bloodshed.
The Shah, who had always held the mullahs in low esteem, suspected they could not stage unrest without a great deal of help from foreigners. To those who dismissed talk of a conspiracy as evidence of paranoia, he reminded them of Iran’s experiences during the Second World War, when British, Soviet, and American armies had occupied his country and divided it into three sectors. The Shah remembered this bitter history and wondered whether he was starting to see old patterns of behavior reemerge. Carter reminded him of Kennedy, another liberal Democrat who held republican sympathies and interfered in Iran’s internal affairs. Then there were the big oil companies. Their contracts to take Iranian oil to market were due to expire, and they held out for better terms. The Shah saw this as a blackmail threat. Above all, he suspected that the U.S. and British intelligence services were taking revenge for the 1973 oil price hike and were determined to install in Tehran a more compliant, less nationalistic regime.
When Reza Ghotbi’s latest request to see the Shah went unanswered, he asked Akbar Etemad, the president of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, to gauge the King’s view of events. “The Americans want to eliminate me,” the Shah told Etemad. “Take me out of my place. But they are wrong. Because if they succeed Iran will become a satellite of the Soviet Union and it will be the beginning of chaos in the region. The domino effect they worried about in Vietnam will happen if Iran goes Communist.” Ghotbi reeled when Etemad relayed the contents of his conversation. “This was shocking for me,” he remembered. “It was normal to hear [the Shah] saying that ‘the Americans are plotting against me.’ He often talked about the oil companies and their influence over the religious people. That part was not new. What was shocking was that he did not say he would fight it. Instead he said, ‘If they succeed…’” The Queen’s cousin wondered what was going on. “My reaction was, ‘There are forces against him, trying to use his people, and that may help to open the political space in Iran,’ but it also means he has a very pessimistic assessment, and if so we are in trouble.”
Other prominent officials and personalities suspected the Shah did not understand the true dimensions of the crisis. They saw inaction as the very worst choice at a time when bold gestures were required to regain the political initiative. On the evening of April 19, 1978, former Savak chief General Hassan Pakravan hosted a small dinner party at his home and took aside the American diplomat Claude Taylor for a discreet chat. Pakravan explained that unlike some of his younger friends “he no longer exercised access to the Shah,” Taylor reported back to Ambassador Sullivan. Nonetheless, said Pakravan, he was confident he knew the Shah “like a book.” The Shah, he explained, was “greatly concerned about economic and political conditions in Iran” as well as “the increasing dissidence of a political, social and religious nature.” But he was too isolated and dependent on advice from a small group of loyalists who told him what they thought he wanted to hear. Pakravan said he hoped the White House might send over a trusted emissary, someone like David Rockefeller, who could “actively pursue an advisory role with the Shah.” The Shah “might get angry and shout,” as was his nature, “but he needs to be told before the present trends are even less reversible.” Pakravan emphasized to Taylor that the Shah was committed to reform and that he had known since the early sixties “that he must set in train the democratization of Iran.” Pakravan’s unusual intercession with Taylor had undoubtedly been prompted by the death five days earlier in New York of former minister of court Asadollah Alam. The general was one of the last of the generation of older courtiers who understood that it had been Alam who had issued the decisive order to call out the army in June 1963—his cool head and firm hand had saved the kingdom. But with Alam gone, who would the Shah turn to if the unrest spiraled out of control?
General Nasser Moghadam, now the head of G-2 military intelligence, avoided talking to the Shah and instead tried another tack by taking his concerns directly to Queen Farah. He telephoned Hushang Nahavandi, the head of the Shahbanou’s Special Bureau, to request a private meeting. During his long tenure at Savak, Moghadam had enjoyed a reputation as a hard-liner but also as someone who was incorruptible. Over the Nowruz holiday he had stopped off at the home of Parviz Sabeti, his old deputy, to let him know that he had accepted an invitation to fly to Washington, DC, to meet with top CIA officials. Moghadam told Sabeti that the Queen had asked him to provide her with a report on the problems facing the regime and the causes of unrest. Sabeti agreed to write the report, which Moghadam then presented to Nahavandi at their assignation at the Reza Abbasi Museum. The general wore a civilian suit so as to avoid stares from the crowds.
Nahavandi read the “brutally frank” document at the table, apparently unaware it had actually been written by Sabeti. The report named corrupt individuals within the Imperial Family, at the Imperial Court, and in private business. It revealed that former prime minister Hoveyda had not only tolerated but also encouraged corrupt business dealings with government officials and that General Nasiri had carried out extortion. It described in detail the breakdown in crown-clergy relations and how problems with the economy were exacerbating unrest in the streets. The report urged that “dramatic measures must be taken ‘at once if not sooner.’” Nahavandi later claimed that the Queen was furious that he had read the report without her permission. She dismissed his version of events as “nonsense.” “There was nothing so secret,” she said. “I knew about the problems, everybody was coming and telling me their problems.”
* * *
THE LOWER SLOPES of the Alborz Mountains were near enough to Tehran for day trips but far enough from the capital that dissidents could meet away from the prying eyes of the security forces. Young student admirers of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini often spent their Fridays hiking around the small hamlets debating politics and Iran’s future.
On Friday, April 21, even as the King and Queen extended a warm welcome to West Germany’s President and Mrs. Scheel at Mehrebad Airport, several hundred students assembled near the village of Darakeh to distribute subversive literature and listen to new cassette tape recordings of Khomeini’s latest diatribe against the Pahlavis. They had no sooner gathered when they were surprised by gendarmes dressed in full riot gear who began corralling them to higher ground, while from the air ten Chinook helicopters swooped down and landed on a nearby field. Those who resisted arrest were beaten and clubbed. “Eyewitness said he saw more than 50 individuals with serious injuries such as severe head cuts, cheeks cut open, and bones broken,” Ambassador William Sullivan reported back to Washington. “Several other dissident sources point to roughness of events and police preparation as evidence that [the government of Iran] is determined to crack down on dissenters, in violent manner if necessary.”
U.S. officials were furious. They believed that the Shah and Prime Minister Amuzegar had reneged on the promises they had made to restrain the security forces and allow peaceful demonstrations. They were aware that in recent weeks the homes of several prominent Iranian dissidents had been firebombed, reportedly by vigilante groups acting at the behest of Savak. Sullivan condemned “brownshirt tactics” that he feared would cause opposition leaders to break off their contacts with the embassy and blame Washington for repression. The ambassador received support from Secretary of State Vance and his deputy Warren Christopher. Their concerns continued to be focused on the Shah’s handling of the unrest rather than the unrest itself. Senior administration officials scoffed at reports that opposition groups were part of a conspiracy by the Soviet Union and its proxies in the Middle East to overthrow the Shah. Parviz Sabeti recalled a contentious meeting he had with CIA officials in Washington in 1977. They got into a “big fight” on the subject of foreign subversion in Iran. “I told them the Mujahedin was getting help from the Czechs, the PLO and others,” he said. “And they said, ‘You’re telling us that everyone who is against the Shah is Communist?’ And I said, ‘No, you are missing the point.’” The meeting ended in acrimony, with the Americans convinced the Shah was hyping the threat from radicals and extremists to justify the use of force to suppress legitimate dissent.
The Americans came down hard on the Shah because they assumed he could end the unrest when he thought the time was right. They not only misinterpreted his intentions but also overestimated the durability of his regime to withstand pressure from within and without. U.S. policy rested on the latest CIA review of the Shah’s prospects. Based on four key assumptions, the agency provided officials in Washington with a glowing picture of Iran as it prepared to enter the 1980s. The report’s first assumption was that the Shah enjoyed “good health” and was likely to be “an active participant in Iranian life well into the 1980s.” Reports circulating in Tehran that the Shah was “suffering from a dread but usually unspecified disease” were “unfounded and are probably the result more of wishful thinking than of medical fact.” Second, there would be “no radical change in Iranian political behavior in the near future.” Now in his final decade in power, the Shah was “not likely to change voluntarily the style of rule which he has found so successful.” He would continue to rely on a “small inner circle of confidantes, whom he uses as hatchet men, enforcers, advisers, and go-betweens with other elements of the Iranian power structure.” Third, “Iran will not become involved in a war that would absorb all of its energies and resources.” Iran was the bulwark of stability in southwestern Asia and at peace with its neighbors—the Shah kept a close eye on developments in the region. Fourth, oil production and exports “will continue to dominate the Iranian economy.”
Central Intelligence admitted that any one of its four assumptions might be proven wrong. “The Shah could die suddenly or be assassinated; a combination of political personalities and forces might reduce the Shah to a figurehead; Iran could become involved in a war with one of its neighbors or in a more general outbreak of hostilities.” Though none of the scenarios could be predicted, there was no doubt that the Shah’s “forced-draft approach” to modernization had placed enormous strains on Iranian society. His programs were so interrelated that the failure of one could affect the others, and all were dependent on “a continuing flow of income from oil revenues: declining oil sales have recently forced a cutback in some programs, and a sharp decline could affect everything else.” The CIA failed to point out that the decline in oil sales and program cutbacks was the direct result of the U.S.-Saudi oil coup that had shaken the foundations of the Iranian economy and weakened the regime’s pillars of support.
* * *
EVEN AS THE White House was assured by the CIA and Sullivan’s embassy that all was well in Iran and with the Shah, on Saturday, May 6, U.S. consul David McGaffey reported from Isfahan that thousands of American defense contractors and their families were “on the verge of panic” and that the city itself was a tinderbox of tightly coiled anger and resentment. McGaffey expressed alarm at the “strength and growing violence” of religious groups whose mullahs “have begun inserting inflammatory anti-foreign and anti-American rhetoric into already anti-Shah sermons, and that they and their students are forming ‘self-defense squads.’” The city was filled with wild rumors: “I was called from several sources about the kidnapping of an American child, an acid attack on two American women, student bodies on the street near American residences, attacks on American school buses, and numerous break-ins, assaults, and rapes. The Elementary School saw a sharp drop in attendance after rumors of an attack and serious vandalism at the school.” Though none of the rumors was true, American parents had decided to keep their children at home, others had fled the city for safety, and contract workers were requesting transfers out of the area.
McGaffey believed the rumors were part of a concerted effort to stampede the American civilian community into leaving Isfahan. “The general population,” he reported, “while unhappy with the situation, is largely sympathetic to the conservative [religious] reaction. As it grows in strength, there is an increased danger that additional targets will be added to the anti-government actions: Isfahan’s Jewish, Armenian and Baha’i communities are increasingly fearful, and Americans are on the verge of panic.… Security officials are now beginning to issue warnings to Americans, after weeks of assurances that there was nothing to fear.”
* * *
ON SATURDAY, WHILE McGaffey warned of a brewing insurrection in Isfahan, the Shah returned to Tehran from a highly successful visit to the southern seaports. He had toured naval installations, attended maneuvers in the Persian Gulf, and been feted by large and enthusiastic crowds. The trip reinforced his own view that Tehran was a bubble and that the Imperial Court in particular was filled with elitists, nervous Nellies, and naysayers who failed to understand his rapport with the great, silent majority of the Iranian people.
Usually reticent before the cameras, today the Shah was practically bursting with good cheer. Everything was going so well, he told reporters assembled at Mehrebad Airport. “I talked with people from all walks of life and could see how happy and hopeful they were,” he said. “You hear about the naval maneuvers but beyond that visible aspect there is the sense of national pride, that intangible achievement which some nations may never succeed in attaining while Iran has fortunately attained it.” He said he had met with local leaders, including senior clergy, who praised him for “generating a new sense of awareness among Iranians in their cultural and religious values.” Iran’s southern provinces would be “turned into an industrial powerhouse competitive with any in this part of the world.… The income of the people, according to the local elders, is high and signs of progress are everywhere.” Before returning to Niavaran, the Shah ended his remarks on a positive note: “This preparedness, vigilance, sense of pride and faith in the future could be seen everywhere in our visit to Tabriz and Kermanshah last year and in our numerous visits to Mashad.”
Not for the last time, the Shah appeared curiously detached from the pall of anxiety that hung over the country. Courtiers worried about his capacity for denial, his aversion to unpleasant news, and his decision to cut out anyone who suggested the situation in the country was anything but agreeable. Even Kayhan, a pillar of the establishment, expressed concern at the official policy of leniency toward rioters and provocateurs. “Over the last three months, the country has witnessed various instances of individuals or small groups of people taking the law into their own hands and choosing to express their ‘views’ by acts of violence and hooliganism,” the editors warned toward the end of the latest forty-day mourning period. The universities were in turmoil, banks had been attacked, shop windows smashed, and private and public property destroyed. “Iranians should stand together in the firm determination that, during this time of liberalization, the rule of law shall prevail.” As if to prove their point, over the next several days students stabbed the head of the faculty of literature of the University of Tehran and threatened another senior administrator; University of Melli students torched two cars, attacked a cinema and a bank, and assaulted another student in his bed; University of Kerman students clashed with police; and Pahlavi University’s central administration building was bombed.
In this strange season of contrasts, with the Shah feeling supremely confident, Sullivan convinced the Shah was strong in the saddle, and Sullivan’s consul a few hundred miles to the south predicting an urban insurrection, perhaps it was oddly fitting that 120 American tourist operators flew into Tehran for a nine-day junket meant to sell them on Iran’s advantages as a major tourist destination. On the evening of Sunday, May 7, the Americans were treated to “a lavish cocktail and dinner” hosted by the Hyatt International Corporation. Managers from Hyatt Regency Hotels in Tehran, Mashad, and the Caspian were on hand to extend a warm welcome for what everyone hoped would be an unforgettable trip. The events of the next few days proved them right.
* * *
THE FIRST SHOTS in the latest round of unrest were fired in Tabriz on Monday, May 8, when police clashed with demonstrators outside a mosque, killing two men. From there, the end-of-mourning protest cycle spread like a brushfire. The next day Qom erupted when mourners destroyed three hundred vehicles and pushed past police lines to rampage through the central railway station, attacking commuters and trashing shops. Mobs attacked buses and beat passengers, then set fires in banks, shops, hotels, and factories. By midday barricades blocked major thoroughfares and prevented emergency crews from dousing the flames. Amid mounting chaos, police officers chased several rioters through alleyways and into a private residence, where they shot to death one person and wounded a second. Only too late they realized they had invaded the home of Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari and that the two victims had been in search of sanctuary. The riots continued even after the authorities cut off the power supply. But even with the town plunged into pitch-black darkness, it took “squads of anti-riot police backed by army units and helicopters more than ten hours to restore law and order in the city.”
On the morning of Wednesday, May 10, demonstrations and riots erupted in nineteen cities, including Mashad, Kashan, Ahwaz, Shiraz, Kerman, Hamadan, Yazd, and Qazvin. The size of the demonstrations—a mob estimated at more than a thousand rioted in Kerman—and the speed with which protesters seized control of streets in major urban centers stunned the palace and unnerved the security forces. Their worst-case scenario—that the Tehran slums would detonate beneath their feet—was on the verge of becoming reality. This time, Sabeti convinced the Shah and Amuzegar to issue a tough public statement warning rioters of severe consequences. For the past few weeks he had drawn up a contingency plan that proposed that the Shah move to a naval base and allow his security forces to smash revolutionary cells, uproot terror networks, and break the cycle of unrest. Liberalization would be halted and the “open political space” closed until religious and political passions had cooled. The reform process would restart only when calm returned to the streets and the threat of rebellion had receded. Sabeti anticipated that the crackdown would be in the main bloodless—he already had at his fingertips the names and addresses of those he wanted to detain. “We had the names of five thousand people divided into five categories,” he said. “I drew up plans to immediately arrest the first and second categories which came to fifteen hundred names.” Sabeti received support from other officials who by now were convinced that the Shah’s liberal policies were leading Iran to disaster.
Sabeti presented the prime minister with his plan. “Now we have to do our job,” he told Amuzegar.
“And what is our job?” asked Amuzegar.
“For the past year,” said Sabeti, “we’ve been told not to arrest anyone. We relied on the regular courts. On the Red Cross. We are not doing our jobs. We have to arrest fifteen hundred people.”
Amuzegar was aghast: “How are we going to respond to international public opinion?”
The prime minister and the head of internal security then argued over how the White House and Ambassador Sullivan would respond to tougher security measures. Sabeti told Amuzegar to ignore Sullivan and do what was right for the Iranian nation—the survival of the regime was at stake. His own confidence in the Americans had long since collapsed. He was furious that his CIA counterparts protested the arrests of Iranian dissidents: “I told [my CIA counterparts that] if an American is arrested here you have the right to ask questions. But we don’t ask you about a black man arrested in Texas.”
Amuzegar refused to approve Sabeti’s plan, which prompted Sabeti to make an appeal to Court Minister Hoveyda. “Now you have to help us,” he pleaded. “You can’t let Amuzegar persuade the Shah not to proceed.”
Hoveyda asked: “Who are they?”
Sabeti showed him the list of fifteen hundred names, divided among five separate groups. Their numbers included:
Pro-Khomeini clergy: three hundred
National Front, Liberation Movement: fifty to sixty
Seminary students in Qom: four hundred
Fedayeen, Mujahedin: six hundred
Intellectuals, writers: fifty to sixty
Hoveyda took the list to the Shah. Later in the day, he called Sabeti and told him that His Majesty wanted General Nasiri to provide him with a report the next morning to justify such drastic action as making “collective arrests.”
* * *
WHILE THE SHAH’S advisers debated their options, Queen Farah took matters into her own hands when she canceled her appointments, called for her car, and ordered her driver to head straight for the slums of southern Tehran. More than her husband or his advisers, she understood the power of a symbolic gesture during a national emergency. Iranians, frightened, confused, and anxious by this outbreak of violence and mayhem, were looking for some sign that the palace understood the gravity of the emergency.
Wearing a plain business suit, her hair pulled back in its signature chignon, and accompanied only by Minister of Education and Science Manuchehr Ganji, the Queen left her car on a downtown block trailed by her wary security detail and “simply went from door to door and street to street, talking to people about their needs, expectations and problems.” It was a bravura performance—the Queen had ventured into a Khomeini stronghold on a day when his men ruled the streets to listen to the concerns of the local people. At one point she took the hand of a small boy and allowed him to guide her through his neighborhood. They chatted together about his life, problems at school, and what he and his friends hoped to be when they grew up. “I went to try to find out what was going on,” she said. “I couldn’t understand that there were so many problems that people had to come out into the streets. I believed the basis of a just foundation had been built.” Like most everyone else in government, the King and Queen had assumed the worst problems associated with modernization would sort themselves out over time. The latest bout of unrest, however, suggested that time was not on their side. Late on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Farah’s inspection tour ended, a mob attacked a branch of Bank Saderat in tony Shemiran, and a large printing press affiliated with Princess Ashraf’s social welfare agency was put to the torch.
* * *
THE SHAH READ the Sabeti plan on the morning of Thursday, May 11. Cautious as ever, he rejected it as unnecessary and fraught with risk. His trip to the southern ports the week before had convinced him that he was on the right path. The people had responded to him magnificently—the bond they shared, the farr, was indissoluble. The problem he faced was that his advisers and supporters in government and in the security forces lacked confidence in the people and were too easily cowed by bomb throwers. At the same time, though he was not worried about the National Front and Liberation Movement—their supporters numbered in the low thousands—he was anxious not to do or say anything that might provoke the mosques, which could turn millions into the streets.
For the first time the Shah understood that inaction was no longer an option—the sewers had been flushed to the point where they were now at risk of overflowing. Even as he considered what to do next he learned that rioting had erupted in southern Tehran, outside the mosque attached to the downtown bazaar near Golestan Palace. Riot police fired warning shots into the air and hurled tear gas canisters to disperse the crowds. “Such large demonstrations attacking the Shah personally are virtually unprecedented in Iran, particularly in Tehran,” reported the Los Angeles Times. British and American schools sent their pupils home, and American companies announced restrictions on employee travel. The Shah was sufficiently alarmed to rearrange his schedule, cancel his appointments for the rest of the day, and postpone his planned departure for Hungary and Bulgaria—the official reason given was a lingering head cold. When he emerged from his office he handed Sabeti’s report to Court Minister Hoveyda. The Shah now accepted that arrests had to be made. But he still resisted the idea of a forceful crackdown, opting instead for what he hoped would be seen as a velvet hammer rather than an iron first. Beside the names of the five groups identified for arrest he made the following notations:
Pro-Khomeini clergy: +
National Front, Liberation Movement: −
Seminary students in Qom: −
Fedayeen, Mujahedin: −
Intellectuals, writers: −
Hoveyda informed Sabeti that the Shah would not give the order to make “collective arrests.” The father of the nation could not behave as a dictator. Sabeti was dismayed: “In the end he only approved three hundred arrests.”
“We are going the wrong way,” he told Nasiri.
“Don’t worry,” Nasiri assured him. “His Majesty knows how to handle it.”
The mood in Niavaran was for conciliation, consensus, and compromise—anything to buy time until things settled down. The Shah was particularly anxious to make amends with Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari, whose house had been invaded by troops several days earlier. On the evening of Friday, May 12, he dispatched to Qom Deputy Court Minister Jafar Behbahanian, who managed his personal finances and property, for a secret nighttime rendezvous with the country’s most popular marja. Behbahanian was accompanied on the trip by Hedayat Eslaminia, a former member of the Iranian parliament whose impeccable religious credentials masked dubious morals. Eslaminia was not an easy man to read. “He was a Savak agent,” Sabeti explained. “He was a friend of General Pakravan, who introduced him to Nasiri. But Nasiri became his enemy for personal reasons. He took information on Nasiri and his corruption to the American embassy.” Eslaminia was also a CIA informant. Like other Iranian officials he was careful to always hedge his bets and kept an insurance policy in his back pocket in case the situation soured—loyalty was only as good as the last paycheck.
Eslaminia’s presence in Qom ensured that Ambassador Sullivan and his political counselors were kept apprised of the negotiations that the Shah and Shariatmadari assumed were highly confidential. At one point during the discussions, Eslaminia asked Shariatmadari if he agreed with a recent remark by Khomeini that the current unrest “foreshadowed a gigantic explosion with incalculable consequences.” Shariatmadari said he did not. Shariatmadari lectured his visitors that he wanted the government to “stop constantly interfering” in religious matters and presented them with the names of four religious leaders he wanted released from detention. Princess Ashraf, he added, should lower her visibility. The Marja said he understood that the Shah could not possibly “accept 100 percent of his requests, but he would be happy with sufficient indications to show the Shah was cooperating.” If he saw good faith from the Shah he would issue a statement of support to the people. Eslaminia then expressed the hope out loud “that some people around the Shah, such as General Nasiri, might be removed.”
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ON SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1978, at the end of a tumultuous week, the Shah’s top security chiefs met in private conference to discuss the raft of challenges facing the regime. By now there could be no doubt that their opponents sought the overthrow of the monarchy. A unified approach to the unrest would be essential if the regime was to survive what looked like a protracted siege. So far, at least, the Shah’s support among the middle class, workers, and farmers held firm, and they had not joined in the demonstrations.
General Nasiri told the others that arresting a few hundred dissidents and troublemakers was only a temporary solution: they should move forward with the tougher approach outlined by Parviz Sabeti. The Savak chief “put forth the view that the way to handle the disturbances was to close the bazaars in cities such as Qom and use all necessary force, including killing people.” But General Hossein Fardust laid out the case for moderation, dialogue, and more concessions. “He pointed to [the] difficulty of Nasiri’s approach if prominent leaders such as Shariatmadari were to appear at the head of their followers carrying a Koran.” If the soldiers opened fire, said Fardust, “It would be a disaster if someone shot a leader in that situation, while failure to put down the demonstrations might even result in some of the soldiers going over to the other side.” He strongly argued against putting conscripts on the front lines. Many were young religious men who “should not be sent into the city of Qom, for example; only police should. Beyond that, he recommended the government open a dialogue with the people and talk to them rather than simply repressing them.”
The split between Savak’s two senior officials was a worrying sign for a regime that relied so heavily on unity at the top. Nasiri’s authority was undermined when his colleagues voted to reject his hard-line prescription and instead support Fardust’s compromise measures. Fardust’s special role at court helped shift the outcome, as he later admitted to Hedayat Eslaminia. The others had followed his lead because they assumed he spoke on the Shah’s behalf. But did he? “Fardust never saw the Shah in his last few years,” said Parviz Sabeti. “He stopped having audiences with the Shah. He was not in meetings with senior officials.” Queen Farah had also noticed a change in their relationship. “In the last years he wouldn’t come anymore to the palace,” she said. Instead of delivering his weekly briefing in person, Fardust communicated with the Shah through a briefcase that contained sensitive intelligence dispatches. Though no one knew what if anything had happened between them, Fardust never corrected the impression that he still retained the monarch’s favor. The Shah was presumably cheered by the news that his security chiefs favored dialogue and moderation over harsh repression. Army troops were pulled out of Qom, and the tanks that lumbered at traffic intersections in southern Tehran returned to base.
While his security chiefs debated strategy, the Shah delivered his first public remarks on the troubles. Millions of Iranians tuned in to watch the live television broadcast from Jahan Nama Palace, and expected the Shah to condemn lawlessness, issue new security measures, and provide them with a clear time line for reforms to regain the political initiative. What they saw instead was a king on the defensive, unsure of himself and in denial about the challenges facing the country. Instead of taking responsibility for the turmoil, the Shah warned of a conspiracy to destroy the country’s unity. “These people are politically bankrupt cases whose only hope is the dismemberment of Iran in the 1907 style,” he said. Rather than engage the left and moderates, he ridiculed the National Front and insisted he would not curtail liberalization “just because these persons may abuse it.” The Shah, snorted one prominent dissident, looked and sounded “like a man in retreat, unable to concentrate or grasp hold of anything. A dictator should be more confident in his own judgment. That, after all, is the only benefit of dictatorship.”
Queen Farah, touched by her earlier walking tour of south Tehran, drove back to the area on Sunday, May 14. Determined to rally public support for her husband, she strolled into a supermarket where she was cheered and applauded by friendly crowds. From there she set out in an unmarked minibus for the southern suburbs, where hundreds of people surrounded her vehicle crying, “Javid Shah!” Women hugged her and poured out their troubles. Hushang Nahavandi, who witnessed the scene, observed that although a section of the middle class “was already beginning to challenge the regime at this time … the lower classes remained loyal to the Sovereign and had no inhibitions showing it. That’s how it was, right to the end.”
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ON SATURDAY, MAY 20, while the Shah and Queen Farah were on a state visit to Hungary, the American consul in Tabriz, Michael Metrinko, attended a four-hour dinner as a guest of the Armenian archbishop. During the meal, Metrinko listened as Archbishop Diyair Panossian “expounded at great length on his fears for Iranian political stability.”
The archbishop told Metrinko that it was no longer a question of “if there is trouble” but exactly “when the trouble will really begin.” Since the Tabriz riots in February, Panossian said he had traveled widely throughout Iran but also to Syria and Lebanon to consult with other Armenian church leaders. “The reports he has received and meetings and discussions he has had all point to serious trouble, he said, and he no longer believes the Pahlavi regime will survive it.” Fearful of Islamic pogroms and an orgy of religious bloodshed, the archbishop informed his American guest that the only option left open to him was to evacuate his entire flock of seven thousand out of Iran to safety. He said he was already helping anyone who wanted to leave to do so. “He cannot see any real future here for Armenians or Christians as a whole, and is caught between maintaining a very ancient and valuable presence in Azerbaijan, or thinking about the real safety of his people.”
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CUSTOM REQUIRED THE Shah and Shahbanou to spend the last week in May in Mashad, capital of Khorassan Province. Before the couple flew out they had an important family matter to attend to. For the past year Prince Ali Reza had been taking flying lessons with an instructor. Now the twelve-year-old begged his parents to allow him to make his first solo flight. The Queen could barely stand the tension as the family gathered at Mehrebad Airport to watch the littlest Pahlavi prince take off. The nose of the aircraft dipped slightly just as he was coming in to land and she exclaimed, “O my God!” His instructor radioed a warning and Ali Reza took evasive action and landed without a hitch. Custom demanded that a new pilot be doused with cold water—the Queen had done the honors when her husband piloted his first F-5—and Crown Prince Reza raised cheers and applause by tipping the bucket over his brother’s head.
If the Shah was looking for proof that he still enjoyed the people’s affection he found it in Mashad, which had remained peaceful throughout the winter and spring. The Pahlavis drove through the city’s crowded streets standing in the back of an open car, receiving the acclaim of tens of thousands of admirers who lined the route tossing bouquets and singing, “Greetings to the king of kings.” The scene was an extraordinary reminder of the Shah’s enduring personal appeal in the provinces. Mashad was far from the intellectual hubbub of Tehran, with its cynicism and snobbery. The city was not a Khomeini stronghold, and its clerical establishment seemed determined to send the Shah a message of support after months of bad news. Like Shariatmadari in Qom, Mashad’s moderates feared Khomeini and looked to the Shah and the army to prevent an extremist takeover. At the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza he reaffirmed his complementary functions as Keeper of the Realm and Custodian of the Faith. “You know about my faith in Islam and my methods of statesmanship,” he told the city’s religious leadership. “My faith is reflected in my words and actions. The Islamic world, especially the Shia community, is of course aware of my other responsibility, which is the protection of the country’s borders and independence.” Then he uttered a warning that in hindsight could only be regarded as prophetic.
If we protect this country we can also protect our religion, our sacred beliefs and our convictions. But if, God forbidding, the country should be rendered shaky, then I fear our religion will be harmed too. There are examples of such an eventuality. But I do not want to mention them.
The senior cleric who replied on behalf of the ulama made the pointed observation that too many young Iranians lacked “sufficient understanding of the true principles of Islam” and were too easily influenced by “distorted views”—a none-too-subtle dig at Khomeini’s call for an Islamic government—and he urged the media and school system to “be more responsive to the need to steer the public away from corrupt views and unethical practices.”
The next day, while the Queen made several spontaneous walkabouts in the center of town, where she was cheered and hugged by the crowds, the Shah took his message to perhaps his most loyal supporters, the factory workers who owed him their livelihoods. He reminded his audience at the Iran National Automobile spare parts complex of how far Iran had come in recent decades, returning to his theme of foreign interference in Iran’s internal affairs and mentioning the country’s division in 1907 between the Russians and British and the 1941 Russo-British invasion and occupation. “If the principles of the [White] Revolution are harmed, not only your children will have to play in dirt, but also you yourselves will be deprived of living,” he reminded the workers. His enemies wanted to “restore the old regime in which workers were ruthlessly exploited, farmers were little different from slaves, women were classed with criminals and the insane, and the country was condemned to eternal backwardness.” The workers rewarded him with rousing cheers and pledges of support for the monarchy. He enjoyed a similar reception at Ferdowsi University, where he mixed with a crowd of a thousand academics amid only light security. As the Shah left the three-hour event he turned to the governor, who had tried to prevent the attendance of twenty leftist professors, and with a mocking smile said, “If only all agitators were like that!”
The Shah returned from his inspection tour of Khorassan Province with a much-needed confidence boost. But he was rattled when a newspaper reporter asked him “why some Iranians felt scared and were leaving the country after liquidating their assets.” This was apparently the first time the Shah had heard that middle-class Iranians were fleeing the country. “What point is there in living abroad as a refugee, even if one is leading a good life?” he asked and reminded them that the “protection of the state required active cooperation on the part of patriotic Iranians as well.” Yet he failed to appreciate the panic gripping Iran’s middle class. The absence of a moderate alternative to the Shah’s rule was driving young people toward extremism. Terrified that religious fanatics were making their bid for power, worried that the Shah was either ill or out of touch, and fearful that the earth was breaking open beneath their feet, the middle class felt pushed and pulled between two extremes. “My God, we would like a decent opposition, a decent alternative, but the idea of the mullahs bringing the mob out to burn the place down is absolutely terrifying,” one middle-class Tehrani told Colin Smith of Britain’s Observer newspaper. In a dispatch he filed in late May 1978, Smith observed that “much of the [religious] protest movement seems to be aimed against the growing secularism of a society where, because oil has made possible what the Shah’s father only dreamed of doing, changes that took centuries in Europe have been telescoped into a couple of decades. Rioters have broken up shops selling televisions, liquor stores, boutiques, cinemas and in accordance with Islamic strictures against usury banks.”
Iran’s secular urban middle class felt the noose drawing around its neck. More cases were reported of young men on motorcycles throwing acid in the faces of women seen wearing Western clothing. The pace of middle-class flight picked up after the Shah’s dismal performance at his press conference. “Bankers suggest that wealthy and middle-class Iranians are prudently transferring funds abroad,” warned the Washington Post. “We’re angry about the Tehran traffic when the shah is spending billions on military gadgets,” said one frustrated Tehran resident. “We’re angry about the pollution in the capital. Face it, everyone has got a complaint.” Prime Minister Amuzegar offered the assurance that the trouble “will play itself out” and “poses no threat” to the stability of the regime. “Many Iranians are not so sure, however,” reported Nicholas Gage of the New York Times, “and some are hurrying to sell property in a declining market in order to send cash abroad. They know that when reformist elements put their liberal, revolutionary and even heretical ideas aside and ally themselves with the mullahs, it means trouble, because the mullahs have the power and influence to threaten the Government.”